No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

37 IRAQ SPIRALS DOWNWARD

AND WHAT A FIGHT it would be. The summer had been a time of reckoning for all of us involved in the President’s decision to invade Iraq. I knew that we couldn’t afford to lose; U.S. credibility and power would have been diminished more severely than at any time since the Vietnam War. Arguably, given the relative importance of the Middle East, the damage would have been deeper and more lasting. When President Bush was asked about those who criticized the war effort, he often said, “Count me among them.” I felt the same way and struggled to find my own center—a compass to guide me forward. Withdrawal was not an option. Maintaining the status quo was not an option. The current circumstances were unacceptable, but a new path was difficult to imagine. What in the world were we going to do?

Steve was asking the same questions and had quietly begun an informal review process within the NSC to look anew at our options. General Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had tasked a group of colonels to do the same. I asked Phil Zelikow, along with my senior Iraq advisor, Jim Jeffrey (and later his successor, David Satterfield), to “think outside the box” and find a way out of the abyss into which we had sunk. In searching for alternative strategies, I told them to conduct a no-holds-barred assessment, to question our assumptions and develop options that would address both the political challenges and the sectarian violence that threatened to tear the country apart. I did so for three reasons. First, I was haunted by the lead-up to the war. We had planned and planned and even tested our plans in war games. But we had not—I had not—done a good enough job of thinking the unthinkable.

Second, I wasn’t certain that the military was prepared to develop and execute a new strategy. Over the next several months of assessing new options, I was initially skeptical about whether a “troop surge” would work. It was not that I didn’t want more troops deployed; I had come to favor a larger presence when it became clear that our forces could not secure the areas they had cleared of insurgents. But more U.S. troops doing the same thing—pursuing the same flawed strategy—would only result in more casualties. I hadn’t been insistent enough as national security advisor when the President had accepted the Pentagon’s assumptions about what it could achieve in Iraq. As secretary of state, I didn’t want to make that mistake again.

Finally, I did not trust the Iraqis to do what had to be done to stop the violence against one another. It was unclear to me whether they lacked the will or the capability—or perhaps both—to bring an end to their sectarian bloodletting. Frankly, I was beginning to wonder if Iraq’s leaders were determined to commit suicide and drag their newly liberated country along with them. If they were, I saw no reason for U.S. forces to die trying to prevent them from doing so.

The debates within and among the State Department, Pentagon, and the National Security Council would continue throughout the summer and into the fall. Despite all of the uncertainty that would color our deliberations, one thing was clear: Iraq stood on the precipice of disaster. It was in that frame of mind that I left for yet another visit to the Middle East.

After a short stop in Saudi Arabia, I arrived in Cairo to meet with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) “plus two,” the two being Egypt and Jordan. We met over an Iftar dinner, the traditional meal that Muslims enjoy after a long day of fasting during Ramadan. I knew it would be an important session because the GCC+2 represented the more moderate, anti-Iranian coalition within the Middle East. I’d developed a relationship of trust with them, and our meetings were frank and often contentious. They would push for a more active role in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. I would counter that I had been to Israel more than any other country in the world, secured direct U.S. budget support for the Palestinians, and criticized Israeli settlement policy publicly. I would then remind them that their budgetary support for the Palestinians did not match their rhetoric. And we would move on.

They would then press me to “do something about the Persians.” I had the feeling that they would happily hold our coats in a confrontation with Tehran. But with the exception of the Bahraini foreign minister, Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed al Khalifa, no one wanted to say anything publicly. So I would try to allay their fears and explain that the United States had no intention of permitting Iran to become a nuclear power.

Then I would exhort them to support the young Iraqi democracy. They would express the view that Nouri al-Maliki was a Shia and therefore pro-Iranian. I would counter that he was an Arab first and had spent most of his exile in Syria because he detested the Iranians. I argued that if the Shia Arabs are isolated and oppressed by their Sunni Arab brethren and have nowhere else to turn, they’re likely to find Tehran’s pull irresistible. “Unless you acknowledge Iraq’s Arab identity, you will force them into the arms of the Iranians,” I would say. We would then go round and round about the need for the Arab states to send credentialed ambassadors to Iraq as a sign of support. Eventually, a year and a half later, the GCC+2 would become the GCC+3 when Iraq was invited to join the group. We needed to institutionalize the Arab world’s relationship with Iraq and believed that the GCC+3 could help bridge differences. It was a major step forward, but the GCC was a conservative group of Sunni authoritarians. Perhaps Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister and a Sunni Kurd, had it right when he once told them, “You treat us like a virus. I don’t know what makes you more nervous, the Shia part or the democracy part.” Now, in the fall of 2006, I desperately needed the Arabs to rally around the Iraqis.

Arriving at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry just before sundown, I was greeted by Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit. Ahmed favored fine suits and nice wines. He was the quintessential “secular” Egyptian, distrustful of the Islamists and proud of the fact that a significant number of women in his ministry did not wear the veil. He could be a bit patronizing. “The president thinks of you like a daughter,” he would say, referring to the aging Hosni Mubarak. Sure, I thought. He probably hates my guts because of what I’ve said about democracy in Egypt. But Ahmed was a good diplomat, and we forged a productive working relationship on everything from the peace process to Iraq. Egypt had even been the first Arab state to send a diplomat to be ambassador in Baghdad. Unfortunately, the envoy had been kidnapped and killed in July 2005, and Cairo had been understandably cautious about sending another representative to replace him.

Ahmed took me downstairs, where the ministers were beginning to assemble for the ceremonial breaking of the fast by eating dates. After joining them—and enjoying the tasty, sugary bites—the more conservative Gulf Arabs left to engage in prayers. “We’ll be right back in about fifteen minutes,” one of them said. “But if your Shia were here, it would take an hour,” he continued, drawing out the your to make it clear that he meant the U.S.-backed Iraqi government.

I stood there with the Egyptian and the Jordanian waiting for the others to finish praying. What a weird place the Middle East is—full of contradictions and chasms, I thought. Before I could reflect too much more, prayers were over. They had taken less than fifteen minutes.

We entered the banquet hall. I was, of course, the only woman among them. I’ve been asked whether it felt strange to be a female secretary of state in a part of the world where women are clearly second-class citizens—if one can even use the term “citizens.” The fact is, when you’re the U.S. secretary of state, no one wants to offend you; you’re just the secretary of state. Occasionally my gender was an advantage—for instance, in meeting and getting to know the matriarch of the UAE. And once in a while there was a moment when I was so glad that I was a woman secretary of state. One such moment came in a meeting with the late Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). SCIRI had close ties to Iran, and Hakim, a conservative Shia cleric, couldn’t even shake my hand because I’m a woman. But after our breakfast at the U.S. ambassador’s house in Iraq, Hakim said that he wanted to ask a favor. What is this about? I thought.

“My thirteen-year-old granddaughter loves you,” he said. “Would you send her a note and then see her when she and her mother are in the United States?” He was beaming as only a grandfather can. I was stunned but readily agreed to do so.

The Hakim women arrived at the State Department a few months later. In bounded a cute girl wrapped in a scarf but also wearing a pink T-shirt. “I have seen you on TV,” she said in perfect English. “I want to be foreign minister too.” Hakim clearly had great hopes for his granddaughter. Maybe that was evidence of a small crack in the wall of resistance to progress for women in the region. It was good to be a woman—and the United States’ chief diplomat, particularly in the Middle East.

The Iftar that night in Egypt had focused more than usual on the Israeli-Palestinian question. My colleagues encouraged me to push for direct negotiations between the parties, particularly in light of the Lebanon war. I couldn’t have agreed more and had written a memo to President Bush suggesting the same. We could use the end of the Lebanon war to reinforce a strategic framework for the Middle East. We could rally the anti-Iranian coalition to support democratic governments in Lebanon and Iraq. Yes, it was a little strange to rally the authoritarians to the cause of freedom—I was nevertheless counting on Tehran’s divisive reputation and behavior to unite us through our common interests, if not our values.

But though the road to the Freedom Agenda went through Baghdad and Beirut, the road to common purpose with the Arabs went through Jerusalem. I wanted to square the circle—that is, push for a Palestinian state to end the conflict but insist on a democratic Palestine to help lay the foundation for a “new Middle East.” I’d used that phrase in the context of Lebanon, referring to the war as the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.” The comment had drawn a rebuke from across the region, including a political cartoon showing me pregnant with the new Middle East, blood dripping from my teeth. Point taken. So I dropped the reference and started to talk about a “different Middle East.” Words mattered a lot in a region that loved to say one thing and do another.

My trip to Jerusalem and Ramallah convinced me that we had a chance to make progress on that vision. The Palestinians had helped their cause with the Israelis and with us by keeping the condemnatory rhetoric about the war in Lebanon to a minimum. Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinians hated Hezbollah and harbored no sympathy for them whatsoever. But no Arab could speak openly about his disdain for the terrorist organization; to do so would invite retribution for appearing to side with Israel in a time of war. Yet, with the war over, they were ready to resume negotiations toward statehood as soon as possible.

Moreover, fighting had erupted in previous weeks between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza—reminding everyone, including the Israelis, that there were two very distinct Palestinian factions, one devoted to peace and the other to conflict. Abbas was fuming at Hamas when I arrived to see him, and though there would be a tentative “ceasefire” a few weeks later, the dustup with the rival faction reminded him that his best card was to deliver a Palestinian state—something that Hamas could not do. In the Middle East peace process it was a thin reed of cooperation—but it was enough. The Israelis and Palestinians, for different reasons, were ready to negotiate.

YOU KNOW that times are rough when the Palestinian-Israeli issue is the bright spot in a trip to the Middle East. I left Jerusalem for Baghdad. There the gloom that I’d felt in Washington deepened. It would—without a doubt—be the worst trip of my entire time as secretary of state.

The politics in Iraq were in an absolutely poisonous state in all directions as sectarian violence raged between the Sunnis and Shia. Before arriving in Baghdad, I told the press that it was not up to the United States to heal the divisions. “They are going to have to resolve these issues among themselves,” I said.

When I shuttled over to the Presidential Palace for a meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, though, it became clear that the Iraqis had a long way to go. Reading off a list of accusations against the Sunnis, the Shia leader seemed to have lost all concept of his own responsibility to bring his people together. I’d expected better from him, particularly after the promises he made to the President in June during a surprise trip to Baghdad. At a joint meeting of the two leaders and their respective Cabinet officials—the President sitting with the Iraqis and the U.S. Cabinet participating by videoconference from Camp David—Maliki had impressed all of us by presenting his own strategy for securing the country and rebuilding the Iraqi economy. Shortly thereafter he had even delivered an address to the Iraqi parliament, laying out his proposal for national reconciliation and healing sectarian divisions.

But as the summer dragged on, the Shia prime minister seemed to cloak himself in sectarian garb. Maliki’s government dragged its feet in cracking down on Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, no doubt because of the repercussions—political and otherwise—he would suffer if he went after the forces of one of Iraq’s most powerful Shia leaders. Instead, it was easier to blame the violence on somebody else. Some of his advisors even intimated that the Shia death squads that his government had failed to eradicate might well have been a figment of the Sunnis’ imagination.

My dinner with Jalal Talabani did not go much better. The rotund Kurd who was Iraq’s president confirmed that everyone felt shut out of important decisions. Dining with Jalal was always an unnerving experience. He ate with both hands, literally shoveling massive amounts of food into his mouth while simultaneously plopping huge portions of chicken, lamb, and rice onto my plate. Yet he was emerging as a statesman and a force for good. We’re in deep trouble, though, when the Kurds are the best hope for Iraqi unity, I thought. I promised to impress upon Maliki the need to be more inclusive.

By the time I reached the residence of Zal Khalilzad, our ambassador to Iraq, I was really tired and annoyed with the Iraqis. Zal had arranged for me to meet with a number of Sunni political leaders, including the leader of the parliament’s Sunni bloc, Adnan al-Dulaimi. I would then see a group of Shia officials to get their perspective on the violence.

The meeting with the Sunnis started on a bizarre note. The speaker of Iraq’s parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, related a story that was meant to be a compliment but made my skin crawl. He told me that he had been in prison at the time of the 2003 invasion. Apparently, the inmates followed the news of the U.S. buildup, including my aggressive language against Saddam. “We put your picture up on the wall,” he said. “We loved you.” I’m not sure if it was true, but it was a novel way for the speaker to introduce himself.

The Sunnis then pulled out unbelievably graphic pictures of what the Shia death squads had done to their people. The images displayed severed heads and limbs and bloodied bodies mutilated beyond recognition of human form. I looked at them—I’d become inured to gore—and expressed some sympathy. I took their point that they were taking considerable risk upon themselves by taking part in Maliki’s government, finding their families the targets of death threats and assassination attempts for what the extremists felt was a betrayal of their cause.

But as I listened to the Sunnis, they seemed to place the blame squarely on the Shia without recognition of their own responsibility to press their Sunni compatriots to lay down their arms. In fact, they were seemingly oblivious to the havoc that Sunni insurgents were causing. After nearly an hour of hearing more complaints about the Shia, I finally snapped. “Let me tell you something,” I said. “We have a saying in America: you can hang together, or you can hang separately. If this situation doesn’t improve, when I come back here in six months you will all be swinging from lampposts. It is time to make your peace with each other.”

I would convey the same message to the Shia parliament leaders who visited me as well. Their complaints and accusations sounded almost identical. “Americans understand fighting al Qaeda,” I told them. “We even understand that some Iraqis think we are occupying your country and that you don’t like it. But Iraqis killing Iraqis—Americans don’t get that, and we’re not going to put our bodies in the middle of your blood feud.”

Later, well after 10:00 P.M. and totally exhausted, I met with Maliki again. I challenged him, saying that we couldn’t solve the Iraqis’ civil conflict for them. “By reconciliation, I don’t mean that you have to love each other,” I said. “But you have got to get a hold of the army and the police. I hear that people are punished for killing Shia, but you are not going after Shia who kill Sunnis. This can’t last. Your words don’t match your actions, and the United States will not stay here if you don’t fix this.” Then I repeated the warning I had delivered earlier: “If this situation doesn’t improve, in six months you’ll all be swinging from lampposts.”

It was quite difficult to sleep that night at Zal’s residence. All night long helicopters skirted back and forth, patrolling the imperiled Green Zone. Earlier in the evening there had been mortar fire aimed at the house. Perhaps the rounds had been meant for me, or perhaps they were just random; haphazard gunshots had become common fare in Baghdad.

The next morning I flew to northern Iraq to meet with Massoud Barzani, the president of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, and urged him to spend more time in Baghdad. He and President Talabani had an uneasy relationship; the two Kurdish leaders had once led rival factions, but, after signing a ceasefire agreement negotiated by David Welch in 1998, they had put aside their differences to confront Saddam Hussein. We needed both of those leaders to invest in a unified Iraq, and we particularly needed Barzani to crack down on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish militant group that launched cross-border attacks against Turkey.

I tried to appeal to Barzani’s sense of pride in overthrowing Saddam and—frankly—to his vanity by saying that he was a founding father of the democratic Iraq. He always listened and always promised to cooperate with the leaders in Baghdad. He would even offer to come down from the mountains of Erbil to help govern. He rarely followed through, but he needed to feel respected lest he distance himself too far from Iraq’s central government. My time with him was necessary, if not wholly effective.

After the meeting with Barzani, I went to the airport but was told that I shouldn’t board the plane. I worried that there might be some unfolding incident, but in a short while I learned that the problem was a mechanical one. Some debris on the runway had apparently been sucked up into the engine of the C-17 and rendered it inoperable. I was due to meet my colleagues in London for an important meeting of the P5+1 and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana. I watched the frantic scene as my staff, including Air Force General Will Fraser, my Joint Staff liaison, worked the phones to find another plane. It was always good to have a senior military officer around to get the Pentagon’s attention in circumstances like this.

Two hours later, a backup military plane took me from Turkey to the United Kingdom. So that I’d make it on time, a London police helicopter met me at Heathrow and lifted me to the downtown meeting. The sights of the grand British capital at dusk were stunning—and soothing. For the first time since I’d gone to Iraq in 2005, I was grateful to be out of the country.

WHEN I ARRIVED in Washington, I went to see the President and told him what I’d encountered in Baghdad. He was troubled because, despite all of the difficulties we faced in Iraq, I’d always been able to step back, keep perspective, and maintain a modicum of optimism. The President, the Vice President, Steve, and I were alone—and I was as unvarnished in my assessment as I could possibly be.

“They have a Bull Connor problem,” I said, referring to the segregationist that patrolled my native Birmingham. “In my neighborhood, when the police showed up, it wasn’t good news. That’s how it is for the Sunnis, and I’m not sure Maliki cares. But this isn’t just about him. It’s all of them: Hashimi, Mashhadani, Dulaimi, Barzani, Talabani. No one wants to act on behalf of Iraq—it’s all about each of them and their sectarian and personal agendas.”

“How do you know that?” the President asked with a little anxiety in his voice.

“They don’t even acknowledge the problem anymore,” I said. “The average Iraqi has no one to trust—not the government, not us. Life in Iraq isn’t even approaching normal, and it isn’t going to until the security situation improves.”

Steve and the Vice President said nothing. The President and I were locked in a pretty intense exchange. He was so frustrated with the situation and with the Iraqis. I knew that he was seriously considering a surge of U.S. forces, and he would later tell Maliki that he was prepared to add troops if the Iraqis stepped up. I was tired, emotional, and on edge. I looked straight at him. “Mr. President, what we are doing is not working—really not working,” I said. “It’s failing.”

“What would you do?” he asked. “How can we make this work?”

I had launched an effort at State to look for answers. I thought about the situation in Iraq constantly. Still, I didn’t want to engage on “solutions” at this moment. “I don’t know,” I replied. “Let me go and think.” That was my moment of deepest despair about Iraq. I wasn’t sure that there was an answer to the President’s question. But that wasn’t an acceptable response. I was secretary of state and one of his closest advisors—and I was as responsible as anyone for the course we were on and the dilemma we faced.